A man suspected of being the gunman who prompted the swift evacuation of Donald Trump from a White House correspondents’ dinner reportedly entered the event as a guest.
Pandemonium broke out during the annual dinner held at the Washington Hilton Hotel ballroom when gunshots rang out. The event was attended by the US President, First Lady Melania Trump, Vice President JD Vance, various politicians, and a multitude of journalists among the 2,500 guests.
Identified as Cole Tomas Allen, 31, from Torrance, California, the suspect was armed with a shotgun, handgun, and knives. He breached a security checkpoint at the hotel and fired at a Secret Service agent at close range, but the agent was protected by a bulletproof vest.
Authorities disclosed that the suspect had no previous criminal record and was not under law enforcement surveillance. They confirmed that he had been a guest at the Washington Hilton Hotel during the dinner.
Interim Chief of Police Jeffrey Carroll stated, “We do believe he was a guest here at the hotel. We have secured a room here in the hotel, and again, we’ll go through the appropriate procedures to determine what was inside there.”
The man reportedly made a charge toward the ballroom before shots were fired. He was subdued and uninjured, undergoing evaluation at a hospital as per police reports.
Donald Trump shared an image of the apprehended gunman and referred to him as a “lone wolf whack job” during a subsequent press conference.
The suspected gunman, who worked as a teacher and a video game developer in California, was described in a LinkedIn profile matching his name. The profile indicated his role as a part-time teacher at a tutoring company, C2 Education, where he was recognized as “teacher of the month” in December 2024.
Additionally, the LinkedIn page mentioned his work as a video game developer, currently involved in creating a game called ‘First Law’ and having previously released a game called Bohrdom, with a trademark registered in 2018.
Having graduated from the California Institute of Technology in 2017 with a mechanical engineering degree, he later pursued a master’s degree in computer science from California State University-Dominguez Hills.
The man gained attention in a 2017 local news report as a Caltech student for developing an emergency brake prototype for wheelchairs. A university spokesperson confirmed that a person named Cole Allen had completed an undergraduate degree in 2017, according to the New York Times.